r a sincere
understanding between the two neighbouring States on the basis of the
cession of the two provinces in accordance with the Berlin Treaty; then
perhaps, later on, a union may be formed in order to oppose the common
enemy. The obsolete policy of _non possumus_, behind which Turkey
persists in sheltering herself has been, on more than one occasion,
hurtful and fatal to her.

The province of Epirus, without the town and department of Jannina, is
like a body without a head. The town of Jannina, which fills so
glorious a page in the modern history of Hellenism, has been ever since
its foundation the capital of Epirus in every point of view. It is only
the bad faith of the Turkish Government which could take advantage of
the inconceivable patriotism of the Albanians to create all of a sudden
an Albanian nationality. It is true that there does exist an Albanian
race, an insignificant branch of that powerful tree of the Hellenic
family; but this race has never played an important, independent, free
part in history. Once only, in the time of Scanderbeg, does Albania
appear to have fulfilled a separate mission, in fighting against the
Turks for the liberty and independence of her rugged mountains; but the
brilliant star of this memorable and almost unique epoch in the poor
history of Albania, the famous hero of Croia, according to recent
researches into this part of the history of the Middle Ages, was not of
Albanian origin. In those long combats for Hellenic liberty and
independence, when the Albanian race fought with the _ilephtes_ and
_armatoles_ of the national regeneration, it was not an Albanian idea
which inspired those brave champions of our independence: it was the
Greek standard, it was the _sabanum_ of Constantine, under the shadow of
which the tyrant was combated by the Greek patriots, and by those who,
in this time of sophism and paradoxes, plume themselves upon Albanian
nationality, in claiming with incomparable _naivete_, in documents and
manifestoes in which historical traditions are disfigured, the
independence and liberty of a nation which never existed in history.
These mountaineers, these intrepid combatants in a holy cause, remained,
during all that revolutionary epoch of Greece, in the rear of the
Hellenic idea, which was doubtless their national idea. This idea
impresses its peculiar stamp on the life of the nation, in its material,
moral, and intellectual existence; but such has never existed in